Festive luminescence

It's Diwali time here in Pune, India. Diwali,or Deepawali, (also called Tihar and Swanti in Nepal) (Markiscarali) is a major Indian and Nepalese festive holiday. A significant festival in Hinduism and some of the other faiths which originated in India - Jainism and Sikhism. Today it is celebrated by Hindus, Jains and Sikhs across the globe as the "Festival of Light," where the lights or lamps signify victory of good over the evil within every human being. The festival is also celebrated by Buddhists of Nepal, particularly the Newar Buddhists.The Sanskrit word Deepavali means an array of lights that stands for victory of brightness over darkness. As the knowledge of Sanskrit diminished, the name was popularly modified to Diwali, especially in northern India. The word "Divali/Diwali" is a corruption of the Sanskrit word "Deepavali" (also transliterated as "Dipavali"). Deepa/dipa means "light of the dharma", and avali means "a continuous line". The more literal translation is "rows of clay lamps"

My mother lights up a cracker on the 'Laxmi Poojan' night. Nice subtle glow highlighting her smile give a feeling of festivity to the photo.


I clicked these two pictures from my terrace. I just got an old tripod from someone and used that to stabilize things. The bulb mode of the camera needs a good tripod and there's no way a nice night shot can be taken by hand. Slow shutter = more light = longer time the shutter stays open = more stability needed. Overall I think these two images turned out nice. These were part of the '100 shots' cracker that went on for about 15 min. That gave me plenty of time to set up the tripod, camera and get a good number of photos

Image 1 : ISO800 | 38mm | f/4.5 | 1/60sec
Image 2 : ISO800 | 55mm | f/11 | 3sec
Image 3 : ISO800 | 55mm | f/11 | 1sec